This sour informer, this bate-breeding spy,
This canker that eats up love's tender spring,
This carry-tale, dissentious jealousy,

That sometime true news, sometime false doth bring,
Knocks at my heart, and whispers in mine ear,
That if I love thee, I thy death should fear:

And more than so, presenteth to mine eye
The picture of an angry chafing boar,
Under whose sharp fangs on his back doth lie
An image like thyself, all stain'd with gore;

Whose blood upon the fresh flowers being shed,
Doth make them droop with grief, and hang the head.

What should I do, seeing thee so indeed,

That tremble at th' imagination?

The thought of it doth make my faint heart bleed,
And fear doth teach it divination :

I prophesy thy death, my living sorrow,

If thou encounter with the boar to-morrow.

But if thou needs wilt hunt, be rul'd by me;
Uncouple at the timorous flying hare,

Or at the fox, which lives by subtlety,

7

Or at the roe, which no encounter dare:

Pursue these fearful creatures o'er the downs,

And on thy well-breath'd horse keep with thy hounds.

And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare,
Mark the poor wretch, to overshut his troubles'
How he out-runs the wind, and with what care
He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles:
The many musets through the which he goes,
Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.

Sometime he runs among a flock of sheep,

To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell;

On the other hand,

to OVERSHUT his troubles,] This is the reading of all the old copies, but Steevens suggested that it was a misprint for overshoot. Malone takes "overshut" in the sense of shut up or conclude. the word may seem a little overstrained, but nevertheless it is the ancient authorities.

This meaning of safer to adhere to

8 The many MUSETS] "Musets" seems employed as the diminutive of muse, -the aperture in a hedge made by the hare in its frequent passage through it: possibly from the Ital. muso, and musetto.

And sometime where earth-delving conies keep,
To stop the loud pursuers in their yell;

And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer.
Danger deviseth shifts; wit waits on fear:

For there his smell, with others being mingled,
The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt,
Ceasing their clamorous cry, till they have singled
With much ado the cold fault cleanly out;

Then do they spend their mouths: echo replies,
As if another chase were in the skies.

By this, poor Wat', far off upon a hill,
Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear,
To hearken if his foes pursue him still:
Anon their loud alarums he doth hear;
And now his grief may be compared well
To one sore sick, that hears the passing bell.

Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch
Turn, and return, indenting with the way;
Each envious briar his weary legs doth scratch,
Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay:
For misery is trodden on by many,

And being low, never reliev'd by any.

Lie quietly, and hear a little more;

Nay, do not struggle, for thou shalt not rise:
To make thee hate the hunting of the boar,
Unlike myself thou hear'st me moralize,
Applying this to that, and so to so;

For love can comment upon every woe.

Where did I leave ?-No matter where, quoth he;
Leave me, and then the story aptly ends:

The night is spent. Why, what of that? quoth she;
I am, quoth he, expected of my friends;

And now 'tis dark, and going I shall fall.
In night, quoth she, desire sees best of all.

And sometime SORTETH] i. e. Consorteth or accompanies; from sort, which was often of old used for a company. See Vol. ii. p. 219; Vol. iii. p. 288; and Vol. iv. pp. 33. 65.

1 By this, poor WAT,] "Wat" is still the name for a hare in many country districts it may be often heard in Warwickshire.

::

2

But if thou fall, oh! then imagine this,

The earth, in love with thee, thy footing trips,
And all is but to rob thee of a kiss.

Rich preys make true-men thieves; so do thy lips
Make modest Dian cloudy and forlorn,

Lest she should steal a kiss, and die forsworn.

Now, of this dark night I perceive the reason:
Cynthia for shame obscures her silver shine,
Till forging Nature be condemn'd of treason,
For stealing moulds from heaven that were divine,
Wherein she fram'd thee, in high heaven's despite,
To shame the sun by day, and her by night.

And therefore hath she brib'd the Destinies,
To cross the curious workmanship of nature;
To mingle beauty with infirmities,
And pure perfection with impure defeature;
Making it subject to the tyranny

Of mad mischances, and much misery;

As burning fevers, agues pale and faint,
Life-poisoning pestilence, and frenzies wood';
The marrow-eating sickness, whose attaint
Disorder breeds by heating of the blood:

Surfeits, impostumes, grief, and damn'd despair,
Swear nature's death for framing thee so fair.

And not the least of all these maladies
But in one minute's fight brings beauty under:
Both favour, savour, hue, and qualities,
Whereat th' impartial gazer late did wonder,

Are on the sudden wasted, thaw'd, and done,
As mountain snow melts with the midday sun.

Therefore, despite of fruitless chastity,
Love-lacking vestals, and self-loving nuns,
That on the earth would breed a scarcity,
And barren dearth of daughters and of sons,
Be prodigal: the lamp that burns by night,
Dries up his oil to lend the world his light.

and frenzies wOOD;] "Wood" is mad, wild. See Vol. ii. p. 205, and Vol. iii. p. 717.

What is thy body but a swallowing grave,
Seeming to bury that posterity,

Which by the rights of time thou needs must have,
If thou destroy them not in dark obscurity?

If so, the world will hold thee in disdain,
Sith in thy pride so fair a hope is slain.

So in thyself thyself art made away,

A mischief worse than civil home-bred strife;
Or their's whose desperate hands themselves do slay,
Or butcher sire that reaves his son of life.

Foul cankering rust the hidden treasure frets,
But gold that's put to use more gold begets *.

Nay then, quoth Adon, you will fall again
Into your idle over-handled theme:
The kiss I gave you is bestow'd in vain,
And all in vain you strive against the stream;

For by this black-fac'd night, desire's foul nurse,
Your treatise makes me like you worse and worse.

If love have lent you twenty thousand tongues,
And every tongue more moving than your own,
Bewitching like the wanton mermaid's songs,
Yet from mine ear the tempting tune is blown;
For know, my heart stands armed in mine ear,
And will not let a false sound enter there;

Lest the deceiving harmony should run
Into the quiet closure of my breast,

And then my little heart were quite undone,
In his bedchamber to be barr'd of rest.

No, lady, no; my heart longs not to groan,
But soundly sleeps, while now it sleeps alone.

3 Seeming to bury that posterity,] Shakespeare either here, or more probably in his Sonnet 3, repeats himself,

"Or who is he so fond will be the tomb

Of his self-love, to stop posterity ?”

But gold that's put to use more gold begets.] So in Marlowe's "Hero and Leander," Sest. I. (Edit. Dyce, iii. p. 15), as cited by Malone:

"Then, treasure is abus'd

When misers keep it: being put to loan
In time it will return us two for one."

What have you urg'd that I cannot reprove?
The path is smooth that leadeth on to danger';
I hate not love, but your device in love,
That lends embracements unto every stranger.
You do it for increase: oh strange excuse!
When reason is the bawd to lust's abuse.

Call it not love, for love to heaven is fled,
Since sweating lust on earth usurp'd his name;
Under whose simple semblance he hath fed
Upon fresh beauty, blotting it with blame;

Which the hot tyrant stains, and soon bereaves,
As caterpillars do the tender leaves.

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
But lust's effect is tempest after sun;

Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done :
Love surfeits not, lust like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth, lust full of forged lies.

More I could tell, but more I dare not say;
The text is old, the orator too green.
Therefore, in sadness, now I will away;
My face is full of shame, my heart of teen":

Mine ears, that to your wanton talk attended,
Do burn themselves for having so offended.

With this he breaketh from the sweet embrace
Of those fair arms which bound him to her breast,
And homeward through the dark lawn runs apace;
Leaves Love upon her back deeply distress'd.

Look, how a bright star shooteth from the sky,
So glides he in the night from Venus' eye;

Which after him she darts, as one on shore
Gazing upon a late-embarked friend,

The path is smooth that leadeth ON TO danger;] This is the text in the 4tos, 1593, 1594, and 1596, but in the edition, 1600, “on to danger" is altered to "unto danger," and that the compiler of " England's Parnassus" used the latter, we have the evidence derived from the fact that the line there given runs,

"The path is smooth that leadeth unto daunger."

6 my heart of TEEN :] "Teen" is sorrow. See previous instances of its use in Vol. iv. p. 308; Vol. v. p. 112.